AMERICA Act Forces $20 Billion Ad Giants to Break Up Exchanges and Brokerages: New Fiduciary Duties Kick In

The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act, or the AMERICA Act, is looking to throw a massive wrench into the digital advertising machine. This bill is a serious antitrust play designed to break up the biggest players who currently control both the marketplace and the brokerage services for online ads.

Starting one year after the law is signed, any company pulling in over $20 billion in annual digital advertising revenue will be forced to sell off parts of their business. They can’t own a digital ad exchange (the marketplace) if they also own a buy-side or sell-side brokerage (the agents who buy/sell ad space for clients). Think of it like this: the New York Stock Exchange can’t also own Merrill Lynch. For the biggest tech players, this means a mandatory, expensive, and complex structural breakup—a forced divorce intended to end conflicts of interest where the same company sets the rules, runs the bidding, and places the bets.

The $5 Billion Best Interest Rule

If you’re an advertiser or a publisher, this next part is huge. For companies making over $5 billion in ad revenue, the bill imposes a new standard on their brokerages. These brokers must now use reasonable care to always act in the best interest of their customers. This is a fiduciary-like duty—they literally cannot put their own interests ahead of yours. They must also deliver best execution, meaning they have to get the most favorable terms available for every single ad order.

This is a major shift. Currently, many ad brokers can prioritize their own platforms or internal deals, even if those aren't the absolute best price for their client. Under this new rule, if a small business owner is trying to buy an ad campaign, their broker must prove they routed the order to the venue that gave the best deal, not just the one that paid the broker the highest kickback. This is the kind of change that could genuinely save advertisers money, but it also creates a massive compliance headache for the brokers, who now face high legal liability if they slip up.

Transparency Down to the Microsecond

To make sure brokers are actually following the best interest and best execution rules, the bill mandates unprecedented transparency. If you, as a brokerage customer, ask in writing, the broker must quickly hand over detailed logs. We’re talking about every bid received, the final price, and the exact time of the bid response—down to the microsecond. To make sure these logs are accurate, exchanges and brokers must synchronize their clocks to within 2 milliseconds of the official time kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Furthermore, brokers must publicly post quarterly reports detailing where they route their ad orders, showing things like the fill rate and the average fee for the top 10 venues they use. This level of detail, which must be kept accessible for three years, is designed to shine a spotlight on murky routing practices and hidden fees. It means advertisers and publishers will finally get a peek behind the curtain to see if they’re getting a fair shake.

The High Cost of Cheating

This bill doesn’t mess around when it comes to enforcement. If a brokerage knowingly violates these new duties, a customer can sue and recover either their actual damages plus legal fees, or a staggering $1 million for every month the violation occurred, whichever is greater. That $1 million per month penalty is designed to be a massive deterrent, ensuring that non-compliance is simply not worth the risk for billion-dollar companies. Crucially, the bill also prohibits these companies from forcing customers to waive their right to a class action lawsuit or use mandatory arbitration for these specific violations, preserving the right for groups of injured parties to seek justice together.

In short, the AMERICA Act is a heavy-duty piece of legislation. For the largest tech firms, it demands a forced breakup that will fundamentally reshape their business models. For everyone else who buys or sells digital ads, it promises a new era of fiduciary accountability and radical transparency, backed by a massive financial stick. The immediate impact will be market disruption and high compliance costs, but the intended long-term goal is a digital ad market that actually functions like a competitive marketplace.